@MichaelSymons_

Documents released earlier as part of the Legislature’s investigation of last September’s intentional gridlock in Fort Lee have not shown Michael Drewniak, 50, of Long Branch, knew about the traffic-jam plan in advance. He was involved, though, in developing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s response to inquiries about what was initially described as a fumbled traffic study.

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It has since been learned that the closures were kept a secret from the authority’s executive director and done without normal procedures, apparently for political reasons after a deputy chief of staff in Christie’s office green-lighted the operation. The revelation has severely damaged Christie’s political standing, though there has been no evidence Christie knew about the plan ahead of time.

The committee’s co-chairs, both Democrats, said Drewniak can provide information about how the Christie administration responded once it learned about the closures, whether through Port Authority emails in September, news coverage in October or otherwise.

“Even if it only came on Sept. 13, when it was reversed, my question still becomes: Who did what the following three, four, five months? It was almost as if everybody just pretended this didn’t happen and it would somehow go away,” said Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen.

“Each time we do one of these, we get more of a look into the atmosphere and the environment that led to why such a bizarre incident was ordered to begin with,” Weinberg said.

“So far we’ve heard from a variety of people who were all afraid to do anything, for fear they’d lose their jobs, starting with the George Washington Bridge manager and that brief glimpse that Christina Renna gave us with her reaction about deleting an email. At least for me, part of it is: What did you do when you found out?” Weinberg said.

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Renna, who was director of departmental relations in Christie’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs until resigning in January, told the Legislature’s joint investigative committee last week she saved a copy of an email former deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly directed her to delete but did not tell others in the office until Kelly’s role was publicly disclosed in January because she was afraid she’d be subject to retaliation.

The Legislature on Monday released copies of the emails and other documents referenced in Renna’s testimony.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, said the relationship between Drewniak and David Wildstein, the now-former Port Authority executive who implemented the lane closures, needs to be more fully understood.

“Clearly he had a role in the after-effects of the lane closures,” Wisniewski said. “We’ve seen the emails in which he helped craft statements about the so-called traffic study. We’ve seen his involvement in issuing statements concerning Mr. Wildstein’s departure. We need to know more about that.”

Wildstein provided the Legislature documents related to the lane closures but refused to testify when it became apparent federal prosecutors were looking into the matter. Kelly, former campaign manager Bill Stepien and former Port Authority chairman David Samson have refused to provide the Legislature with subpoenaed documents, asserting their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Drewniak was the public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office from 1998 through 2010, under three U.S. attorneys, including Christie. He developed a trusting relationship with Wildstein while at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, when Wildstein anonymously ran the PolitickerNJ political blog under the pseudonym Wally Edge. Drewniak told lawyers hired by Christie’s office to conduct an internal review he didn’t know that it was Wildstein who was running the site until 2010.

Wildstein and his boss at the Port Authority, then-deputy director Bill Baroni, had recruited Drewniak to work in communications at the authority. In 2012, Drewniak told Christie he was considering taking the job for a change of pace and higher salary; the governor asked him to wait and consider the offer at the end of 2013.

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Drewniak and Wildstein appeared to be in frequent communication, sometimes through Drewniak’s work email account and sometimes through his personal email. Drewniak told investigators he would use his personal email because it was easier to view on his iPhone than his state-assigned BlackBerry. Christie’s deputy chief of staff for communications and planning Maria Comella told the internal investigators Drewniak had a “particular focus on Port Authority issues.”

On Thursday, Sept. 12, Wildstein let Drewniak know when the first press inquiry about the Fort Lee traffic was made to the Port Authority and forwarded him a draft copy of the planned response. He also reached out to Drewniak when the first Wall Street Journal story about the closures was published; in a response, Drewniak called the idea it was done for political retaliation “a nutty suggestion.”

Drewniak and Wildstein would meet for dinner occasionally. In early December, Drewniak had dinner with Wildstein two nights before he was ordered to resign; at that meal at a New Brunswick steakhouse, he was told by Wildstein that Kelly and Stepien knew of the closures in advance.

Even after the story exploded with the Jan. 8 leak of documents showing Kelly and Wildstein’s apparent role in ordering the lane closings, Wildstein apparently felt he remained close enough with Drewniak to send a late-night email with the subject line “Serbian,” the derogatory nickname assigned to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, that read: “Did you see that bastard hamming it up on Wolf Blitzer?”

By then, Drewniak saw Wildstein differently. “The only trouble is that David is/was a true friend of mine,” he wrote to a friend in a January text message. “Now, I could claw his eyes out, pour gasoline in the sockets and light him up.”